President Donald Trump announced that he was reporting NBC News’s Kristen Welker to the Federal Communications Commission for “rebuke and punishment” over comments she made about his endorsement record. In a Sunday post on Truth Social…
Page A2From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
President vows to report broadcast journalist to FCC for 'rebuke or punishment'
As it ran on the front
So the President sat for an interview, didn't like the questions, and the response wasn't a statement, wasn't a lawsuit — it was a promise to report the reporter to the Federal Communications Commission for 'rebuke or punishment.' Read that phrase again slow. Rebuke or punishment. That's not a press release, that's a threat with letterhead.
Here's the thing nobody wants to say plain: the FCC doesn't discipline reporters for asking hard questions, because that's not what the agency is for, and everybody in that building knows it. So when the man with the nuclear codes announces he's calling them anyway, the point was never the outcome. The point was making every other reporter in that room watch it happen and do the math on their next question.…
…(cont) That's the whole trick, and it's not new, it's just usually quieter. You don't need to actually punish the press if you can get the press to punish itself first, in the edit room, before it airs. One threat, reported by two outlets on the same day, does more work than a hundred quiet phone calls, because now everybody's seen the shape of the consequence even if the consequence never lands.
And notice what didn't happen here. No bill. No hearing. No vote. Just a man who already has the power to launch weapons, promising to also make a phone call about a woman who asked him a question on television. If that sounds like a small thing, ask yourself why it needed a promise at all, out loud, on the record, to two different newsrooms.
The stakes aren't complicated. He's not wrong that he has leverage over the FCC — he appoints the people who run it. So when he says rebuke or punishment, that's not bluster you laugh off at the end of the bar, that's a man describing a lever he's already got his hand on. The rest of us just get to watch which reporter's next question gets a little softer, and which network decides the ratings aren't worth the phone call.
He has the nuclear codes. He also, apparently, has the FCC's number memorized. Both facts are true. Only one of them used to be funny.
“He didn't sue, he didn't rebut, he picked up the phone to the agency that licenses her employer. That's not thin skin, that's leverage, and everybody in that newsroom just watched him use it. Ask yourself why the next question gets a little softer.”
“The President has every right to hold broadcasters accountable to the public interest standard, that's literally what the FCC exists for — for the record, it does not exist for that, but the sentiment is that biased coverage has consequences, and if a call to a federal agency is the consequence, well, at least it's not a lawsuit. Yet.”
The receipts
President Trump said Sunday that NBC News's "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker will be reported to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after she reportedly said that Trump-endorsed candidates have had mixed results this election…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.